Research Guides: CORE 1000: Planning the American City: Home

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Pius XII Memorial Library
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314-977-3106

Subjects: Criminology & Criminal Justice, Government Information, Political Science & Public Policy, Social Work, Urban Planning

Keeping Track of Your Sources

Zotero
A free Web browser extension to help you collect, manage, and create references and bibliographies. This helps keep all your sources in one place and allows you to easily create a full bibliography when you need to!

Class Activity

Class Activity

This course page was created for CORE 1000: Planning the American City with Professor Bob Lewis in Spring 2023.This is just a selection of sources that may be useful to you in this course. Contact your course librarian (Rebecca Hyde) with questions or to make an appointment for an in depth research consultation. For quick and/or general questions you can also use our 24/5 chat assistance to get help with your research!

Statitsics & Measuring Change

Census Data Site (Official)
This is the official portal for Census Data. Enter the name of your city and then look for the "View Profile" link in the box to the right of the results list. This takes your to a current, quite comprehensive profile of your city including demographics, employment, housing, education, health and more.

Social Explorer This link opens in a new window
1790-present. The tool provides easy mapping and report creation functions for U.S. Census data on population and housing, as well as statistics on religion, crime and health. Use this is find change over time, as well as easily create maps that can be exported for presentations, etc.

Useful Resources for Community Profile Paper

Digital Public Library of America
This searchable collection includes digitized photographs, documents, and more from libraries, archives and museums all over America. This is a goods place to search for old images or historical information about your city.

SLUth - Search Plus This link opens in a new window
You won't find something about every city in SLUth, but it's a great place to potentially find if there are an academic articles that mention your city - if there is academic research about your city, it might give a clue to some of what is important in it's history, culture, and/or governance.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch (ProQuest Historical Newspapers) This link opens in a new window
1874-2003. Search here for news related to your city before 2003. Things like major policy discussions, city incorporation, mayoral elections, and other important events are likely to be noted, especially those of regional interest.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Nexis Uni) This link opens in a new window
Search St. Louis Post-Dispatch through NexisUni for access to more recent news articles related to your city.

Search USA.gov
Search USA.gov searches .gov, .mil, .us and selected other domains that include official local, regional, state and federal government agencies. Information related to your city may show up on local or state (or even federal) government websites. this is a good place to search them all at once.

Other Resources for this Course

Gale eBooks This link opens in a new window
This collection of reference books and encyclopedias is a great place to search for biographical information on your famous planner presentation.

20 Minute Rule

Research takes time, but you shouldn't spend hours searching and finding nothing. If you spend 20-30 minutes on your research and you feel like you're hitting a wall, stop what you're doing and contact your librarian or use our 24/5 chat assistance! We can help you develop search search strategy, and maybe choose another database more suited for your topic.